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A N A P P R E C I AT I O N

Chadwick Boseman knew how to breathe and live ‘Howard forever’ Boseman was more than an actor. He was a griot among thespians.

Chadwick Boseman was Howard University’s commencement speaker May, 12, 2018, in Washington. Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

BY S O R AYA N A D I A M C D O N A L D @ S O R AYA M C D O N A L D

September 1, 2020

Chadwick Boseman was a griot among thespians.

That is why it’s di�cult to face the reality of saying goodbye to

Boseman, a South Carolina-born son of Howard University who

soared to vertiginous heights on the wings of his love for Black

people. His doesn’t represent the loss of a single book, but an entire library.

Boseman’s seemingly never-ending capacity for excellence shone through

his roles in biopics, depicting Jackie Robinson, James Brown and Thurgood

Marshall. But when I look at Boseman through the eyes of a critic who

graduated, like Boseman, from Howard, I see an embodiment of lineage and

legacy. That is what makes the pain of his death from colon cancer at age 43

radiate through my bones, because his work feels like the apotheosis of a

project that began decades before his birth.

What Boseman accomplished in his too-short career as an actor came from

an earnest embrace of Black theatrical tradition as cultivated at the home of

the Howard Players, the student acting company founded at the university

in 1919 (Boseman was a former president of the group). Within Boseman,

the spirits of Howard’s dramatic luminaries converged — the rigor and

dignity of Ossie Davis, the radical defiance of Amiri Baraka, the homespun

egalitarianism of Pearl Cleage, the self-possessed elegance of his teacher and

mentor, Phylicia Rashad. He was the idyllic apex of what an actor molded

from Howard’s conservatory could be, an old soul in a modern man’s body,

always willing to take chances and expand the Black imagination, whether it

be through his

, his

easy, toothy grin, the glint in his eye or the humanity he unspooled on

screen as he inhabited one singular, history-making Black man after

another.

exuberant red carpet style

(https://tomandlorenzo.com/2020/08/chadwick-boseman-redefined-

celebrity-male-style-in-the-space-of-a-few-years/#.X00uZZ5KhTY)

That is what made Boseman so special — he carried the legacy of a people

and an institution as though it weighed no more than a feather, allowing his

adoration of Black people and Blackness at large to be the cloud on which

he floated, the element that propelled his work into something that could

never be contained within an Oscar statuette, a reward he never received.

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Boseman’s seemingly never-ending capacity for excellence shone through his roles in

biopics, depicting Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and Thurgood Marshall. But when I

look at Boseman through the eyes of a critic who graduated, like Boseman, from Howard, I

see an embodiment of lineage and legacy.

It felt as though we were just witnessing a small sampling of Boseman’s

obvious and sprawling artistic capacity. His breakout film role was

portraying Robinson in (2013), but his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from

Howard was in directing. He was a playwright. Boseman penned

, which was inspired by the Sept. 1, 2000, killing of

, a fellow Howard University student slain

by a Prince George’s County police o�cer who shot him in the arm and

back.

in 2005. When it did,

theater critic Chris Jones found the work so impressive that he suggested

Boseman could become Congo Square’s “grand young muse.”

42

Deep

Azure Prince Jones

(https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13020801/black-

victim-black-cop-black-county)

Deep Azure debuted as a production of Congo Square Theatre

Company in Chicago (https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-

09-22-0509220274-story.html) Chicago Tribune

Boseman was the sort of movie star one could imagine returning to New

York for a triumphant and credible starring turn on Broadway, following in

the footsteps of his

. And it wouldn’t have

been a situation where audiences

to see a splashy actor pad his resume with some gravitas, but

rather a homecoming, because the stage is where Boseman’s career began.

British American Drama Academy benefactor Denzel

Washington (https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/entertainment/denzel-

washington-chadwick-boseman-tribute/index.html)

paid Broadway ticket prices

(https://theundefeated.com/features/how-to-get-more-black-on-

broadway/)

It’s just one of the possibilities for Boseman’s future that will never be

realized, along with the opportunity to see him marshal his many talents —

for leadership, empathy and acting — to direct a film of his own. I have not

seen it yet, but I suspect Boseman’s turn in the Netflix adaptation of August

Wilson’s (directed by theater veteran George C.

Wolfe and written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, a frequent interpreter of

Wilson’s work) will leave us heartbroken anew for what could have been.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

And yet he was never so saintly that he wasn’t real.

When Boseman was promoting his cop thriller , the film’s press

tour took him to London, where

with Helena Bonham

Carter, Olivia Colman and Richard Ayoade. Over and over in ABC’s tribute to

Boseman, which aired Sunday night after , Boseman’s co-

stars praised his skill and generosity as a scene partner, his ability to elevate

the game of everyone around him because of his sheer dedication to the

craft. Seated beside Ayoade on the set, the two men

provided a study in contrasts. Boseman was in full control of a confident and

easygoing American brand of cool, dapping up Norton on his way to the

host’s famous red sofa while sporting a textured black leather trench coat

and a patterned black-and-white tunic. Ayoade, best known for his role in

, was quintessentially British — a bit halting and shrinking,

nebbish and self-deprecating. And yet the two men got along so famously

21 Bridges

he appeared on the Graham Norton Show

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_stafNyL1Q8)

Black Panther

Graham Norton

The IT Crowd

and with such ease that I found myself wishing for a buddy comedy starring

the two of them. Boseman possessed an innate magnanimity that would not

allow him to upstage someone else, a skill he put on full display in

as he played big brother to Letitia Wright’s Shuri.

Black

Panther

Boseman seemed to take the best of Sidney Poitier — his regality, the intellect

he poured into every performance — and have fun with it. When he hosted

, Boseman turned in a

that surpasses

in its

ability to both distill something true about race in America while also

delivering something lasting in a medium intended as pop culture

ephemera. Sometimes, he didn’t need minutes, but a mere moment —

at the 2019 Oscars when

Saturday Night Live sketchBlack Jeopardy

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzMzFGgmQOc) Tom

Hanks’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7VaXlMvAvk&t=6s)

a

smirk he shared with co-star Michael B. JordanBlack Panther

(https://shadowandact.com/chadwick-bosemans-reaction-to-green-book-

winning-best-picture-is-all-of-us) Green Book

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won best picture was enough to sum up the amused, unsurprised

resignation of every person who’s ever witnessed Black excellence lose out

to white mediocrity. That too, endeared him to us.

As

, Boseman is preserved on celluloid

as “our Malcolm our Martin,” forever young, guiding his Black

countrymen from the grave. Though his portrayal of T’Challa made him an

icon, it’s Stormin’ Norman who comes the closest to immortalizing who

Boseman was in real life — a man who remained a wellspring of compassion,

purpose, inspiration and divine grace even when submerged in a terrifying

miasma of American violence, chaos and anti-Black contempt. A youngster

who could o�er the genuine solace of an elder, even if he never actually got

to become one.

Stormin’ NormanDa 5 Bloods’

(https://theundefeated.com/features/from-apocalypse-now-to-da-5-

bloods-a-war-that-never-really-ended/)

and

Boseman is gone, joining his

as another prematurely and cruelly called to the fraternity of ancestry. So we

say goodbye, knowing that a future generation will spawn a talent they’re

bound to describe as their Chadwick Boseman.

co-star Nelsan EllisGet On Up

(https://theundefeated.com/features/true-blood-nelsan-ellis-rest-in-peace/)

Rest well to a king who showed us, through his life and work, what it truly

meant to be, to breathe, to live “

.”

Howard forever

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIHZypMyQ2s)

Soraya Nadia McDonald is the culture critic for The Undefeated. She writes about pop culture, fashion, the arts, and literature. She is the 2020 winner of the George Jean Nathan prize for dramatic criticism, a 2020 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the runner-up for the 2019 Vernon Jarrett Medal for outstanding reporting on black life.

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